On the 1st of July, 2015, we were invited to a closed session with AMD at the Bridge Bar of the GTower Hotel for the official launch of the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card.

They not only set up a wide range of sample systems to demonstrate the performance of the new Fury X graphics card, they also gave us some hands on time with samples of the upcoming Radeon R9 Fury X2 and the R9 Nano, as well as the actual Fiji GPUs that power them.

Let's take a look inside the launch event!

Here's hoping that this VIP will be leaving the launch event with a Radeon R9 Fury X!

Two redheads here in Malaysia? A coincidence? I think not... Ice appears to be the theme of the day, with iced teas and an ice sculpture. I suppose they would be smashing this ice sculpture later to "release" or launch the Radeon R9 Fury X. And before you ask, no, the girls were not there to melt the ice sculpture...

We arrived early, so we took the opportunity to take some photos of the AMD Fiji chip. It is a massive chip, partly because the GPU itself measures 596 mm², packed with 8.9 billion transistors; and partly because the package includes four HBM stacked memory modules arranged around the GPU. For more specifications of the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X, please take a look at our Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide.

Do you see the four HBM memory chips sitting next to the GPU on the package? Those are stacked memory chips that not only feature a super-wide 4096-bit wide memory bus, it obviates the PCB real estate normally used by the DDR5 memory chips. The end result? Smaller and cooler graphics cards!